This gallery collects the production sketches from this movie. They show the intense attention to detail that's seen in the cels and backgrounds, and some of the artwork, and certainly some of the annotations, must come from the director, Takashi Nakamura.

More of them, especially the shuuseis, are probably the work of the film's Chief Animation Director, Mamoru Sasaki, who had served an extended apprenticeship as gengaman (or key animator), working on the Neon Genesis Evangelion saga as well as Nakamura's earlier film Catnapped. Her key animation also appears in Chobits, Fushigi Yugi, Ghost in the Shell (movie), and Jin-Roh. She has remained active as a gengaman (e.g., for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) but has earned more distinction for animation direction, notably in Texhnolyze and in the Naruto franchise.

Sasaki was assisted by four Assistant Animation Directors, however, so I've not tried to identify artists. The sketches are often lovely in detail but extremely faint, so I've often digitally darkened these scans to make them more easily viewable on a computer screen. These need to be viewed up close and personally to be appreciated. Even so, the reduced and "stretched" scans give a good sense of the visual difficulties that had to be addressed in realizing Nakamura's surreal world, as well as the care taken to do so in a naturalistic, consistent way.